Palomar, My Palomar

Gilbert Hernandez is my favorite comic book writer. This takes nothing away from the efforts of others working their craft in the field but for my money Beto is the most engaging, thought-provoking, and imaginative writer currently using comics as his chosen medium. That he is no slouch when it comes to cartooning is a delightful, undeniable wonder as well.

At the heart of his expansive body of work are the tales he continues to craft for the monumental Love and Rockets series he co-created with his brothers Jaime and Mario. The 50-issue volume one run of L&R is inarguably one of the greatest comics series ever published (were I, for whatever reason, lost on a desert island for a long period of time they are certainly the comics I would want to have in library there.)

Gilbert’s most bountiful and intricate L&R tapestry was, of course, the fictional Latin American town of Palomar with its colorful and interesting…simple folk and complicated souls in the same instant…citizens. The sprawling, sobering, humorous, life-affirming, fanciful, bittersweet masterpiece that is the story of the town is told in the massive, utterly magnificent 522-page hardcover collection, Palomar: The Heartbreak Soup Stories (if there is a better comic book collection I haven’t seen it.)

Hernandez left Palomar behind to follow the amazing force of nature that is Luba, the towering id of the Palomar stories, to America but he’s returned to it in New Tales of Old Palomar, a 3-issue magazine-sized series from Fantagraphics Books and Coconino Press.

New Tales throws the spotlight on untold tales from the town’s past with “The Children of Palomar”. We know the final fates of many of the characters already but these grand little stories delve into episodes we were no previously privy to and, in the process, they add nuance, insight, and pathos to the things we know will happen to the characters in their futures.

The first issue features the “secret origins” of two beloved Palomar denizens as well as telling vignettes about relationships that would develop in due course (we can see, for example, the moment when feisty Carmen began to fall in love with bookish but stolid Heraclio.) The second issue focuses on an odd adventure shared by the young, ever-petulant Gato along with the doomed Pintor and Manuel whose deaths would one day become poignant chapters in Palomar history. Sheriff Chelo, the bright and unwavering maternal heart of Palomar, is at the heart of both issues saving, nurturing, and protecting the children (of all ages) of the town.

New Tales is a wonderful addition to the Palomar canon (the 3^rd issue is due to be published in the fall.)